


Nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah

by Anonymous



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Angels, Dysfunctional Family, Emotional Abuse, Episode: s02e03 The Reichenbach Fall, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-08
Updated: 2013-02-08
Packaged: 2017-11-28 14:22:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,680
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/675373
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock is on the side of the angels, and also happens to be one of them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah

**Author's Note:**

> _I did my best, it wasn’t much_  
>  I couldn’t feel so I tried to touch  
> I told the truth, I didn’t try to fool you  
> And even though it all went wrong  
> I’ll stand before the Lord of Song  
> With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah  
> — from “Hallelujah” by Leonard Cohen

Three times life quickened in Anya's womb, and three times it guttered out in a burst of pain and bloody tissue. The third time, she could take no more, and went to her knees in the back garden.

"God and all your angels," she said, "if there are any angels out there, please listen, just for a moment. My heart can't take this anymore. Please, give me a child – and if not, just tell me now that I'm barren, so I don't have to go on hoping."

She knelt there for what felt like a long time, eyes closed, listening to a sudden wind as it rustled the leaves of the cherry trees.

A voice spoke, hollow and great like a bell. "Did you try a sperm donor?"

Anya gasped, but before she could open her eyes, the voice said, "No. Keep them closed. I'm not the kind of angel you can capture in a painting. Not without going mad first."

She kept her eyes closed, haunted by a feeling that the wind she'd heard had been stirred by a pair of enormous wings.

"Well, _did_ you try a sperm donor? Heaven helps those who help themselves."

"Yes. The last one…" Anya choked a little, remembering how Anton held her as she trembled, and bled and bled.

"You tried," the angel said, and the edge of kindness was so small beside the vastness of the voice itself that it seemed to barely exist at all. "What price would you pay, Anya Holmes, for children of your own?"

"Anything," she said.

"It would be kinder to adopt, to your children and yourself," said the angel, "but I can offer you children. Two sons, seven years apart."

"I will do what I must."

"Very well. But know this: should either of your sons ever know true love, the knowledge of someone for whom he would do anything at all, he will ascend. He will gain his wings and join the ranks of angels, and you will never see him again. You will be forbidden to share the truth with them or anyone else."

"Please! Just let me have my children!"

"Very well."

The leaves on the cherry trees rustled, and this time Anya could feel the wind on her face, cold and piercing. She opened her eyes. The garden was empty.

* * *

Mycroft came home from school sniffling, his eyes rimmed all around with red.

"What's wrong?" his mother asked, serving up a tea tray for both of them.

The boy ignored the tea and biscuits. "Everyone in year five hates me," he said. 

"And why is that?" said Anya.

"Because I'm cleverer than all of them!" Mycroft clenched his small fists, and his face turned bright red. "I always finish my maths and reading first, and they call me a know-it-all and they say that everyone hates a know-it-all."

"They're right, you know," said his mother. "Nobody likes a know-it-all. They make ordinary people feel small. But you're always going to be cleverer than them, so it's no use trying not to be. They're never going to like you, but you're going to outshine them all, one day."

"Can't clever people have friends too?" asked Mycroft.

"Oh, Mycroft. You're more than just clever. You're a genius. A mastermind. And geniuses don't have friends. They have success and power. You're going to be the greatest of them all." Anya pushed a teacup toward her son. "Now, you were studying the French Revolution on your own, weren't you? Tell me about the influence of Rousseau on the French Revolution. _En français, s'il te plaît._ "

Sherlock came home for Christmas from boarding school in one of his blackest sulks, taking delight in sneering whenever anyone offered him a meal or some company. Finally, Anya decided it had to end, and she locked away his violin in a hiding spot she was sure it would take him at least an hour to find and successfully break into. She found him in a guest bedroom, checking the closet for the violin case.

"I'll tell you where it is if you'll sit down and talk," said Anya.

Sherlock scoffed and kept searching.

"I'll give you the box and let you break into it. You can practice your lockpicks."

That made Sherlock pause. He turned around. "Fine. What is it?"

Anya pointed to a chair. "Sit down."

He did, arms folded across his narrow chest, chin tucked so he stared into his own lap.

"What happened?"

"Nothing."

"We both know that isn't true. What happened at school this term? I know it wasn't your marks, you've been applying yourself more this term."

Sherlock mumbled something into his chest.

"I can't hear you."

"Victor," Sherlock mumbled. "We had a row and now he doesn't like me anymore."

"Your roommate Victor? Of course he doesn't like you! Mycroft told me what you do to him. Playing violin at all hours of the night, scribbling all over the walls, following him everywhere he goes…"

"It'll come off the walls eventually. I need the violin and the wall-writing to concentrate. Everything gets out of focus if I stop."

"I know that's what you need," said Anya. "It's how you are. You know what the psychiatrist said. But the fact remains that Victor isn't going to like you. No one you live with is ever going to like you. That's why you've got to forget other people and focus on your work."

"My work," Sherlock echoed.

"Yes, your work." Anya smiled. "It's what makes you happy, isn't it?"

* * *

Sherlock received twenty calls from Mycroft and let them all go to voicemail, even when John offered to answer them for him.

The next day, when he went out to retrieve some kidneys from the morgue for an experiment, Mycroft's omnipresent black car intercepted him. His assistant opened the door and gave him a pointed look. Sherlock, who knew the measures Iphigenia was authorized to use to get him into the car, gave a long suffering sigh and sat down next to her. 

The car dropped him off at Mycroft's disgustingly over-ornamented house. The door was slightly ajar. Sherlock came in and found Mycroft waiting for him in the sitting room.

Sherlock refused to sit down. If he sat down, that meant he was agreeing to a conversation. Mycroft might even have tea brought in, as if he were a houseguest. That was unacceptable. "Three times in two days. That's a record even for you. Were you planning to meddle on a daily basis now that I've a flatmate into whom you can try and sink your claws?"

"I must admit my curiosity about this flatmate of yours. Were you planning on telling Mummy?"

"Of course not," Sherlock snapped.

"She deserves to be informed of major developments. She wants only the best for you, Sherlock."

"What's the use? You're going to tell her whether I give you permission or not."

"Well, if you'd prefer that she hear about your army doctor from _my_ perspective, that would certainly – "

"Don't you dare," Sherlock bit out. "I won't have you telling her rubbish about John."

That earned Sherlock a long, considering look from Mycroft. He hated that look. It meant he'd revealed more than he'd intended. It meant that his brother had won this round. 

* * *

"You're not going home for Christmas?" asked John, as he strung up lights around the flat.

"What gave you the impression that I would?" Sherlock was using a magnifying glass to examine mould that he'd been cultivating in the bathroom cupboard (much to John's dismay).

"Mycroft said something about your family's Christmas dinners. Your family isn't having one this year?"

"No." 

Later, when John had gone upstairs to call Harry, Sherlock took out a crumpled and torn Christmas card from his pocket. It was the same as the one he received every year from Mummy. He and Mycroft were expected to go, and Sherlock would be expected to listen as Mummy wondered if he couldn't be doing something _more_ with his talents. He'd done it for years, and he could do it again.

But this time was different in one respect. He would be expected to sit there and listen as Mummy told him it would never work out between him and John. That John was an adrenaline junkie who followed Sherlock around only because he wanted his danger fix. That he ought to form associations with important people, like Mycroft, not live in a cramped flat joined at the hip to some common army doctor.

And that – that, he could not bear to hear.

* * *

Sherlock stood on the rooftop, a thousand trains of thought rushing through his head. These thoughts included the following:

_he didn't say he sent killers after Mummy or Mycroft, but he could have been lying, what if he was, why was he never an open book like everyone else_

_Moriarty is dead but somehow it doesn't make anything better, there are still only three colors in the world, black and white and John's eyes_

_if only I could properly see John's eyes, it would feel a little less like the sky falling down, because they'd be dark and blue and steadfast, and I could search them for a reason why he will never ever believe me when I say that I'm a fraud_

And, finally, this one:

_What if I hadn't worked it out with Molly? What if I were standing here with no backup plan? What would I do?_

_I would jump. I would call him and hear his voice one last time and reach out to him as if he were near and I would fall to my death because –_ Sherlock thought, giving John one last look – _I would do anything for him. Anything at all._

A curious sensation washed over him. It filled him with lightness, like helium, blinding white as the sun. He wasn't falling. He was flying, up and up, inexorable as gravity.

Below, a dark figure fell. Below, everyone watched the figure shatter against the pavement. Below, everyone watched the fall, except for John Watson. His gaze never wavered from Sherlock as he was drawn into the sky.

* * *

"I don't understand," said Anya. Her hand curled around the corner of her younger son's headstone.

Her live-in nurse, Indira, was several yards off, but nonetheless, Anya dropped her voice to a whisper, letting her tears fall onto the black stone.

"I tried, Sherlock. I thought I – I thought it was enough. To keep this from happening. I tried so hard. It worked on Mycroft, but not on you. I'm sorry."

She tilted her head to the sky, eyes closed. "Is that what you wanted, angel? Have I paid the price?"

There was no reply.

* * *

Sherlock could see, but nothing he saw made sense. 

The way of the world was patterns. Everyone saw patterns; that was why the world made sense. Sherlock saw more and grander patterns than anyone. 

Now, the only pattern he could see was a glory of golden wings, their span vaster than London, perhaps all of Britain.

The thing with wings had a voice, whispery and soft, like he'd always imagined the skull's voice to be, back when it had been Sherlock's only companion. It spoke. "Well, Anya made a right mess out of you, didn't she?"

"What does any of this have to do with Mummy?" Sherlock demanded. He wasn't going to listen to anyone insult her, not even an angel.

"Oh, just _look_ , will you?"

Sherlock stared, eyes slightly narrowed. Still there were no patterns.

"Not that sort of looking. Look the way you look at John."

Suddenly, everything came into focus.

Everything. The tapestry of space and time, threads interwoven in patterns too great for even Sherlock to guess at. It was the landscape of the universe itself. He thought of Mummy again, and in that moment he discerned her thread within the tapestry, bright and glittering like cloth-of-gold. One of the angel's feathers rested against that thread, an earlier point in the thread than Sherlock had ever known. And when he looked, his gaze soft and unsearching in the way it always was with John, he saw the bargain his mother had made with the angel.

"That's rubbish," said Sherlock. "I don't want to be an angel."

It surprised him even as he said it. There had been a time in his life when he'd wanted almost exactly that. He'd wanted to be a god, beyond the petty concerns of mortals. A being that couldn't be hurt, that saw everything and knew everything and that was the way it was supposed to be, it wasn't freakish, it was what gods did.

He didn't want it anymore. 

"Put me back," Sherlock demanded. "Make me human again. Let Mycroft be the angel. I'm sure he'd enjoy that. He could meddle with the entire universe."

"Look," the angel said. It pointed one of its infinity of wings toward the tapestry. There, he saw a soft brown thread that looked like it might have come loose from one of John's jumpers. Other threads were closing in on the jumper-thread in a snarl, each as jagged as barbed wire.

That wasn't the only thread in the tapestry the barbed wire was threatening to tear. There was a length of purple yarn, and another of gray cotton thread.

His friends were still in danger.

The angel reached out and brushed a strand of barbed wire with a long pinion feather, and its stranglehold around the purple yarn that was Mrs. Hudson loosened a little.

"You can learn how," said the angel, whisper-soft. "You can keep them safe. I'll teach you."

"And when they're safe," said Sherlock, "I'll return."

To that, the angel said nothing.

* * *

The barbed wire was untangled. It would never cross paths with the timelines of his friends, not ever in all the length of the tapestry. Sherlock's work was done.

"I'm going back now," Sherlock announced. "Show me how."

"You can't go back," said the angel.

"I'm an angel. I can do anything."

The angel was silent for a long time. Finally, it said, "If you go back to earth, you can never return here."

"What gave you the impression that I care? Show me how to go back."

"Do you realize what this means? You won't – "

After all this time repairing the tapestry under its tutelage, Sherlock had learned how to interrupt an angel. "I've spent my entire life firm in the knowledge that nothing of me would outlast my death. It's no great loss. Besides, a life with John is infinitely preferable to an eternity of _this_ ," he said dismissively, waving a dark wing at the unending landscape.

"Very well," said the angel. "I will show you. But you must not tell Mycroft."

"I hadn't planned on it. He wouldn't believe me if I did."

"Perhaps I shall see him soon."

Sherlock snorted his disbelief at that.

"Here is your thread," the angel said, pointing with its pinion feather to a blue-black thread twined around John's. "Now, imagine you can walk upon it…"

* * *

He appeared on the rooftop, as if no time had passed at all, though clearly it had. Moriarty's corpse was gone. There were no traces of blood. 

Part of Sherlock wanted to take a train to Mummy's manor and demand an explanation for all she'd done to him and Mycroft. Part of him never wanted to see or speak to her again. 

He still had everything in his pockets he'd had when he ascended, including his wallet. It was six in the morning, judging by the slant of the grey light. His coat was too warm and heavy on his shoulders; the humid reek of August in London rose off the streets. Early morning pedestrians passed by, none of them pausing to look up. He turned for the stairs before anyone had the chance to notice him.

He went to the pathology lab first. Judging by the arrangement of the equipment, it had to have been about a year since his ascension; it had changed too much for only two months to have passed. Molly wouldn't be here for another two hours, if she kept the same schedule as she had last year. He wished she were here, so he could ask her if the deception had worked as they'd planned, if Mycroft had seen through it, if everyone was living their lives the way they had been. He could learn all of this from John, but it would be easier to hear it from her. He could wait here until she arrived, but then he'd risk someone else seeing the dead man risen, and the last thing he needed was a _scene._

Sherlock forbore a cab and walked to 221b Baker Street. Above, he'd been able to see the grand pattern of all of space and time, including London, but it wasn't the same as walking the streets and breathing the air. London, his oldest companion, had changed while he was Above. Shops had closed, and new ones had taken their places. Familiar trees had fallen, and recently; there must have been a summer storm that tore them down. He didn't recognize some of the people sleeping rough in the parks.

But some he still did. Wiggins was curled in his blue sleeping bag, much shabbier now than Sherlock remembered. The boy stirred at Sherlock's approach, then rolled over to face him. He didn't look like a boy anymore. His face had sharpened, and a substantial beard crept up his neck and onto his chin. 

At the sight of Sherlock, Wiggins scrambled upright. "Mr Holmes!" he cried. "You're alive!"

Sherlock raised an eyebrow. 

"We did everything just like you said," said Wiggins. "But you weren't in the back of the truck like you was supposed to be. We thought it had all gone pear-shaped somehow."

For some reason, it hadn't occurred to Sherlock that his ascension might make Molly and the homeless network believe him to be truly dead. "And what of John?" he demanded. 

Wiggins' face softened, though Sherlock couldn't think why. "We kept an eye on him for a little while after. He didn't take it well, Mr Holmes. He moved out of 221b. He lives in Stepney now."

"Moved out? Why?" Sherlock could feel the geography of London shift seismically beneath him. Baker Street was no longer John Watson's home.

Wiggins tilted his head. "You really don't know?" 

No, he didn't. 221b was where John was meant to be. He had seeped into every crack of it: the place on the sidewalk where he'd tripped once, the lamp-post he sometimes leaned against while waiting for a cab, the employees at Speedy's who all knew how he liked his coffee.

"Look at it this way," Wiggins said. "If it had been Dr Watson who threw himself off a building in front of you, what would you have done?"

He would have been very nearly tempted to set 221b – no, all of London – on fire. "It's not the same. John Watson is a good man. Anyone would mourn his death."

"Not like you would, Mr Holmes."

"What's his address?"

Wiggins gave him an address in Stepney. Sherlock opened his wallet and took out a 50 pound note, as smooth and crisp as it had been the day he ascended, and held it out to Wiggins. "Buy yourself a new sleeping bag. That one's got fleas and smells abominably."

Wiggins took the note and put it in the pocket of his hooded sweatshirt. He saluted Sherlock, tightened the drawstrings of his hood, and burrowed back into his sleeping bag. Sherlock stepped onto Marylebone Road, where the cabs were beginning to appear in force. He hailed one and took it to Stepney.

The thought of seeing John in his new flat in Stepney, in this place where he did not belong, was distasteful, but the thought of any delay in seeing him again was worse. As an angel, Sherlock could only interfere with the Pattern in subtle ways. Otherwise, he would have restored everything to the way it was. Otherwise, he would have banished any hurt he might have caused John. Perhaps the angel who struck the bargain with Mummy, who created Sherlock and Mycroft, who had taught Sherlock how to do what angels did, could have done it. But Sherlock had never been that sort of angel, nor had he wanted to be.

Sherlock paid the cabbie and entered John's building. His first instinct was to pick the flat's lock, but John reacted swiftly and violently to any potential danger, which was how he would perceive an intruder. Was John awake at this time of morning? He knew nothing about John's life now. It was infuriating. He needed John back at Baker Street, where he knew everything. Sherlock rang the doorbell.

At first, there was nothing. Then footsteps on a wooden floor, barefoot. The rustle of soft pyjama fabric. The metal scrape of bolts drawing back. The door swinging free of its frame with a gasp of air. John.

His eyes, unfocused with sleep, went sharp. They were exactly the color they ought to be, dark blue and steady as anchors. Sherlock looked at him in the way he always looked at John, taking in the whole of him, not just the individual unravelings and stains that spoke the details of John's life in a thousand accusing whispers.

John looked… resigned. Yes, that was what the whole of him said, not the evidence of his grey hairs and his worn pyjama bottoms ( _unemployed, still single, suicidal ideation within the past year,_ they whispered), and that was how he sounded when he said, "Why don't you come in and I'll make us some tea."

Sherlock almost said no, he didn't want tea, why would anyone need tea at a time like this, except he did. Objectively, he had spent fourteen months Above. Subjectively, it could have been two days or two millennia. Two millennia gone by without John making him tea. That couldn't be right. It would have to be rectified. So he nodded, and followed John into the flat, and tried not to look at any of it: the military tidiness, the bareness of the walls, the leak in the corner of the ceiling. The only thing left to look at was John, going through the familiar ritual of making tea. It would have been easy to take in the sight of him, to just drink it in like warm tea, if it weren't for the tremor in his left hand.

John set two mugs of tea on the coffee table. His left hand shook so much the tea nearly spilled over. He sat in the chair opposite Sherlock. It was only then that Sherlock realized he had taken a seat. He reached for his mug and rested his fingertips on the rim. Still too hot. He studied John's face. There were five new creases there, two at the corner of each eye and one on his forehead. Sherlock thought of how he might smooth them away. Move him back to Baker Street, yes, that would do it. It had to be this horrible blank flat that was crushing him, crumpling his face. 

John took a sip from his steaming mug, then said, matter-of-factly, "I hate you." Another sip. "You utter bastard."

"You know about the assassins," Sherlock said. "You know what their orders were. Mycroft would have told you as soon as they were apprehended."

"Yes, I know." The creases of John's face softened, by a fraction so small that few but Sherlock would have noticed. "That's the only reason I didn't punch you in the nose the moment I saw you."

"Moriarty wanted you and Mrs. Hudson and Lestrade to think I was a fake. He wanted to ruin me. That was the point of the snipers. I had to play along."

"And I never thought you'd let your actions be dictated by what Moriarty wanted," John said.

Sherlock stared down into his tea and took a sip. John couldn't control his eyes the way Sherlock did, couldn't lock away what he felt behind carefully frozen walls of ice. Disappointment. After seeing so much fascination, admiration, wonder in John, after the aching lack of it Above, it stung and prickled his throat like too-hot tea.

"You could have told me," John said.

"You're a poor liar," said Sherlock. "You couldn't have kept the secret from everyone."

"If you'd trusted me," John said, "we could have gone on the run. I'd have done it in a heartbeat.” He let out a shivery little breath. “Then maybe you wouldn’t have died.”

“Died?” Sherlock stared at him.

“That’s what they call it, isn’t it?” John said, his voice too mild. “When people go to Heaven?”

For a long moment, Sherlock had no idea what John was talking about. Then, finally, he began to connect disparate facts. He had been an angel, in a place he couldn’t help but call Above, even though it had no relation to physical space. It wasn’t at all like the concept of paradise as Sherlock understood it, but it bore some resemblances to Heaven as Christians and Muslims imagined it. He remembered the ascension, though he did not like to recall it, as eidetic as his memory was, Moriarty’s insane malice and John’s quiet disintegration equally crisp and indelible. John’s eyes had followed him up, not down. No one else had seen him rise, but John had.

“How long have you been able to see angels?” Sherlock asked quietly.

John barked a laugh. “Is that what this is? The first time was right after I got shot. It wasn’t coming for me. It just hovered over the firefight, watching. Like it was something on the television, instead of right there. I always thought it was a hallucination brought on by shock.” He filled his mouth with tea and swallowed hard. “But then it was you, and it was the same. I could see through you, or into you, and there was a pattern there, raw and burning, like you see before a migraine. And then you rose so high I couldn’t see you at all. Your body was on the sidewalk, but it was empty. I didn’t want to believe it, but I knew.”

“Yes,” said Sherlock. His breath fluttered across the surface of his tea. “I suppose I must have died. But I returned.”

“How?”

“I made them show me the way back.”

“Them?”

“The angel. The one who ascended me. They didn’t want me to return. I insisted.”

“Why?” said John, leaning forward, every line of his body a compass needle pointed to Sherlock. 

Sherlock blinked. “What do you mean?”

“Why did you insist? You were an angel. You could see everything, learn anything. There’d never be a mystery you couldn’t solve. You didn’t have to deal with mundane life. No eating, no sleeping. No tedious mortals with their dull little minds. Sounds right up your street.”

“Knowing everything is boring. There’s no mystery if the solution is obvious. Becoming an angel doesn’t mean that everything is solvable. It means that everything is already solved.” Sherlock took a mouthful of tea, then grimaced. “Besides, angels are even more dull than mortals. They don’t commit murder.”

“And that’s the great redeeming quality of humanity, is it? That we commit murders for your entertainment?”

“Or for my protection,” Sherlock said quietly.

John began to smile despite himself, the corners of his mouth and eyes twitching. At last he said, “So you finally admit you’d have been done for if I hadn’t shot the cabbie?”

“I thought I’d check, so long as I was an angel. There was no scenario without you in which I survived.”

“But it didn’t work,” said John, choking on his smile. “You died anyway. Eventually. I couldn’t stop it. You made me _watch_.” 

“Don’t be dull, John, you know how I abhor repetition. You had to believe I had died a disgrace. You needed to hear me say I was a fraud. It was the only way to keep you alive.”

“That’s not the point,” said John, his face ragged with anguish. “The point is that you died, and you didn’t want to be dead, and there was nothing I could do.”

“Why does it matter? This display of sentimentality is unbecoming of you, John. You are here, and so am I. Everything else is pointless detail.”

John gave him a strange look, his eyes gone as soft as one of his jumpers. “And you, wanting to be here with me instead of in heaven with angels? That’s not sentiment?”

“I don’t want to be _here_ , I want to be back at Baker Street. And it’s not sentiment, it’s necessity. The work must continue.”

“And you need me for the work.”

“Call it angelic perspective. A Study in Pink isn’t the only case that would have been unsolved or fatal without you.”

“Hang on. Does this make you a fallen angel?”

“I wasn’t forced to leave. I chose it. Call me a former angel, if you insist on an epithet. Will you come?”

“Where?”

“To Baker Street. This flat is loathsome. I can feel myself becoming duller by the moment just by sitting here.”

John froze up. His eyes darted around the flat, at the litany of miseries told by the furniture, the stains, the sterile white surfaces. “Will you keep secrets from me?”

“In your case, that has rarely been to my benefit.”

“Good enough, I suppose,” John muttered. “Will you die again?”

“I don’t plan to do so in the near future, but it’s impossible to be certain.” Sherlock felt his mouth twitch into a smile. “After all, it could be dangerous. Will you come?”

John put down his tea mug, let out a shaky breath, then looked up at Sherlock and said, “Oh God, yes.”

* * *

At John’s insistence, Sherlock helped him carry some bags of essential items down to the cab. Once they finally sat down in the backseat, John said, “How do you know 221b will still be available? Mrs. Hudson could get much better rent for it than we paid.”

“I had a plan to survive my encounter with Moriarty,” Sherlock said. “Mycroft was aware of it. He would have made sure Mrs. Hudson kept it vacant. The plan was disrupted, of course, but Mycroft’s would-be omniscience ends at the boundary between heaven and earth.”

“And you didn’t tell me about the plan,” John said, voice tight with anger. “You would have let me think you were dead.”

Sherlock hated seeing John’s face like that. His disappointment crawled across Sherlock’s skin, emotion transmuted into physical sensation. His voice came out clipped. “I would have come back as soon as the assassins were disposed of.”

“And how long would that have taken?”

“I don’t know. As quickly as I could manage without putting you or Lestrade or Mrs. Hudson at risk. It may have taken hours or eons when I was Above. I don’t know. The flow of time, it was – “ Sherlock gritted his teeth. “Illogical.”

The anger and hurt slid off John’s face, replaced by a soft-edged surprise. “You’re saying you helped catch the assassins? While you were an angel?”

“Isn’t that what angels do? Meddle in human affairs?”

“I thought there might be – I don’t know, some sort of cosmic plan. Ineffable ways. That’s what I learned in church as a boy, at any rate.”

“If there is such a plan, no one informed me, and even if there had been, I would have ignored it. I haven’t any use for a cosmic plan. All I knew was that you were still under threat from the assassins, and that I had the power to stop it.”

John passed the rest of the cab ride in stunned silence, stealing sidelong glances at Sherlock from time to time, as if he thought they might go unnoticed. For once, Sherlock didn’t object to feigning ignorance. Each glance felt like a splash of warm summer rain across his face, and he was content to let them wash over him.

When they arrived at Baker Street, Sherlock paid the cabbie, much to John’s startlement. He gave John a quelling look. John knew, and Sherlock deduced, that he could ill afford the fare. Sherlock slung a gym bag full of John’s clothing over his shoulder and climbed the stairs. The key was still in his pocket. After opening the door, he waited at the threshold, feeling John’s presence at his left shoulder. 

“Hello?” came Mrs. Hudson’s voice, querulous, from 221a. “Is that you, John?” 

Sherlock glanced at John, a silent signal for him to speak.

"It's me," John said. "And I've got a guest."

Mrs. Hudson appeared at the door. She paused for a moment at the sight of Sherlock, wide-eyed. Then she punched him.

She was much shorter than him, and frail, but she knew how to compensate for the disadvantage well enough. She aimed the punch toward his chin, and his head snapped back as much from surprise as from the impact. John's hands on his shoulders kept him from stumbling backward, but it was a near thing.

When he regained his balance, Sherlock found himself grinning from ear to ear. He hugged Mrs. Hudson. She cried against his chest, "How dare you keep this from me, as if I couldn't keep secrets, how dare you…"

"I didn't keep secrets because you're stupid and dull like the rest of them," Sherlock huffed. "I kept secrets because you're dangerous, and the people out to kill you knew it."

“I know about the snipers. Mycroft told me. That still doesn’t get you off the hook.”

Mrs. Hudson looked at John, and only then seemed to remember him. She gave a little start, then punched Sherlock in the chin again. This time he did stagger back.

“That’s for keeping secrets from John! You don’t know what you’ve done to him!” 

“Please, Mrs. Hudson, I’m fine.”

“No you’re not! You’ve forgiven him again, like you always do, but that doesn’t make it all right. John, you’re welcome back at 221b anytime you like, but Sherlock is not to live here without your permission.”

“He has my permission,” John said firmly. 

“If you’re sure, dear…” Mrs. Hudson wrung her hands, then looked back and forth between them. “221b is just how you left it, nothing moved out or in, though it’s a sight cleaner since Mycroft’s people were at it. Very efficient, that lot. I go upstairs and dust from time to time.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Hudson.” Sherlock started toward the stairs. He saw Mrs. Hudson almost ask them to 221a for tea, then think better of it.

He stood for a moment in the living room, taking it all in, the eloquence of the dust. He walked to the window overlooking the street. His violin wasn’t there.

“Where’s my violin?” he said, turning to face John.

John rubbed his forehead. “I left it at the flat in Stepney. Sorry.”

“You brought my violin to that dreadful hole in Stepney? Whatever for?”

“Because I _missed you_ ,” said John, suddenly snarling with fury, “and the violin reminded me of you, not that I’d expect you to understand that.” His entire body shook, his left hand most of all. “I was mourning you, and the violin helped, and I took anything that might help because hardly anything did, and _you did this to me_.”

“I didn’t have anything to _help._ They don’t have that sort of thing Above,” said Sherlock. “I managed.”

“You _managed_ , did you?” John took a step toward him. It was menacing, and Sherlock was not one to categorize something as dangerous lightly. Then, abruptly, he laughed. It was an ugly, manic laughter. “You think you’ve managed! You haven’t managed – you’re mad! You’re as barmy as I am!”

Sherlock raised an eyebrow. He wasn’t sure how else to react. He didn’t know what John was talking about or how to make him stop laughing like that.

“Haven’t you noticed?” John choked out between fits of laughter. “The master of deduction notices everything about everyone except himself, is that it?”

“Noticed what?” Sherlock’s alarm was now accompanied by annoyance.

“How you walk. The way you drank your tea,” John said, his laughter reduced to a few harsh-edged giggles. “You don’t move like a human anymore. It’s like you’re an alien.”

Sherlock flinched a little, then cursed himself for it. John could read entirely too much into such emotional displays.

“That’s not what I meant,” John said. “You’re human to the bone, never mind what anyone says. No, it’s more like you spent decades in a foreign country, and now you’ve come home and forgotten all the customs. You remember the language but it doesn’t feel like yours anymore.”

And John would know what that was like, wouldn’t he? Sherlock has known these facts since the moment he laid eyes on John, but he never considered the implications for the way John sees the world. Perhaps there were implications of his time spent Above for the way he saw the world now. He didn’t want that to be true. He wanted everything to be the way it was. But logic demanded he accept that was impossible.

“Perhaps neither of us managed,” Sherlock admitted. “But then, we never have.”

And John smiled, and nodded, as if to say: _Well, that’s all right then._

* * *

Mycroft called on one of the bad days, a day when Anya was in too much pain to leave her bed. Days like this, she stared at the ceiling and missed Anton, until her thoughts were directed elsewhere. Indira knocked very gently on the door and said, “Call from your son, marm. He says it’s important. Are you well enough to take the call?”

“If Mycroft says it’s important…” Anya’s voice came out threadier than she would have liked. 

Indira brought in the cordless phone and helped Anya sit up as comfortably as she could. Her hand was steady enough to hold the phone without support, and she waved to Indira to give her privacy.

“Hello, Mycroft,” Anya said, once she was settled.

Without preamble, Mycroft said, “Sherlock’s alive.”

Anya nearly dropped the phone in shock. It was impossible. It wasn’t in the bargain. If that clause could be cheated, then which others could have been? Could she have raised her boys differently, and got away with it? No. Angels were not so merciful. There had to be a catch.

“Is he well?” Anya said. “Where is he? Will he speak to me?”

“He seems well enough,” said Mycroft. “He’s back at the Baker Street flat with his doctor friend. Dr Watson has made it quite clear that neither of us are to try to contact him. I sent one of my best agents for a rendezvous despite his warnings and she came back with a black eye.” 

_He knows_ , Anya thought. _He knows what I’ve done to him, and he hates me for it. I always thought it was worth it, even if he hated me, if my efforts would save him from the angels. But it was all for naught. I failed him. Mycroft is all I have left._

“Very well then,” she said, resigned. “We have amply earned his contempt. Perhaps he will forgive us, perhaps not. It is out of our hands.”

“I deserve this, Mummy. I betrayed him to the enemy. It is no fault of yours.”

“It is, Mycroft. I made him into the sort of man who has more enemies than friends.”

“You underestimate the friends he has.”

“I don’t,” said Anya. “Not for a moment.” 

* * *

_Come to dinner at 221b Friday night._

_Wear the new dress. John will find it aesthetically pleasing._

_SH_

Molly felt a wave of relief rush through her body as she read the text message, even though Sherlock had already called her (at John’s insistence, she guessed) to awkwardly thank her for the assistance with faking his death. She’d so convinced herself that their scheme had failed that she’d not got used to the idea of him being alive. Of course she accepted the invitation, but she forbore the dress (which of course Sherlock knew she’d bought without ever seeing it) because Sherlock had no business deciding whether she aesthetically pleased John or not. Though she had to admit she found it amusing that Sherlock wanted her to please John. She texted back:

_You do know I’m with Greg now, right?_

_Deleted._

_SH_

Molly huffed and shook her head at her phone. Greg was going to remind Sherlock of their relationship regularly now, just to take the piss.

She brought a bouquet with her. Sherlock opened the door, saw the flowers, and said stiffly, “Thank you, Molly,” while reaching for them.

Molly snatched them back and gave him a sharp look. “They’re not for you.”

“Oh,” said Sherlock.

She made an exasperated noise. “Yes, oh. You’re not the one who just found out his best friend only _pretended_ to off himself.”

Sherlock stared at her as if she might have been replaced with an impostor, but let her in anyway. 

At the top of the stairs, Molly got a whiff of something delicious. She found herself saying, “Oh.”

Sherlock’s mouth twitched. “Yes, oh,” he said, taking pleasure in the reversal. “It’s not a takeaway. John! Have you checked the gratin?”

“The gratin is fine,” said John’s voice from the kitchen. “You fuss worse over your cooking than you do over your experiments.”

“It’s all chemistry,” said Sherlock as Molly followed him in. 

“If all chemistry is the same to you, then this is a type of chemistry I wish you’d do more often round the flat.”

“That’ll happen the day you have a cooking-related murder case, I expect,” said Molly. Inwardly, she boggled at how domestic 221b had become in the few weeks since Sherlock’s return from the dead. Two years ago, she would have sworn that Sherlock didn’t do domestic. So he did know how to apologize, after all.

“Oh! Molly! Sherlock, come watch this so I can say hello.”

Sherlock went to the kitchen without complaint. John emerged, saw the flowers, and said, “Oh, Molly, they’re lovely. Thanks.” He took the bouquet, beamed at her, and gathered her into a one-armed hug. Then he went off in search of a vase.

Molly stood in the middle of the flat and looked around. It was much neater and barer than she had ever seen it. Mycroft must have had Sherlock’s things packed up while he was gone, and John had never been a material man. For the first time, she felt no apprehension about sitting on any of the furniture, but all the same it felt wrong. 

The table was set for three. Molly perched on a chair awkwardly until John came back with the flowers in a vase and set it on the mantelpiece. Molly thought that was an odd place to put flowers, but then, the mantelpiece was awfully bare.

“Sherlock’ll finish up in a moment,” John said. 

On an impulse, Molly reached out and took John’s hand. She whispered, more intensely than she’d planned to, “John, I’m so sorry.”

“Sorry about what?”

“I helped him. With the – the fall. We planned it together. I saw how much it hurt you, but he told me I couldn’t say anything, and I’m sorry!”

“Molly, please,” said John, gently extricating his hand from hers. “You must have thought he’d died too. It hasn’t been an easy time for any of us.”

“I’m still sorry,” she said, “so you’ll just have to accept my apology, or I’ll never stop.”

“All right, then,” said John, smiling a little. “If it makes you feel better, I accept your apology.”

“How’s he treating you?” Molly asked in an undertone, glancing toward the kitchen.

John blinked. “He’s been… Sherlock. Only way to describe it. Bit more apologetic than usual himself.”

Sherlock opened the oven and a wave of heavenly smell drifted through the flat. “A _bit_ more apologetic?” Molly said.

John coughed to disguise an embarrassed laugh. “Yeah. Well.”

“If you’re done gossiping about me,” said Sherlock, carrying a tray of potato gratin to the table, “dinner is served.”

Sherlock didn’t apologize to Molly for letting her think their plan had failed. He didn’t behave any differently than he had since that dreadful Christmas party. But after serving her portions of every dish, he asked her if she wanted seconds, his pale eyes taking in her face as if he hadn’t seen it in far longer than fourteen months.

* * *

There are few mysteries on Earth that are unsolvable. Sherlock Holmes proves that with a long, successful career consulting for New Scotland Yard, chronicled for posterity by his blogger.

All careers must come to an end. It takes John years to convince Sherlock to retire, but when he finally does, they move to a country estate in Sussex bought with the substantial inheritance from Anya and Mycroft Holmes. 

One morning, John is sitting in a rocking chair on the porch, taking in the warmth of the summer sun while Sherlock digs up soil samples from the garden. He’s asleep enough to refrain from chiding Sherlock for straining his knees with all that digging, but awake enough to smile and hum just loud enough for Sherlock to hear – until suddenly, he isn’t.

Sherlock knows, the moment it happens. Perhaps it is a testimony to how long he’s been an intimate acquaintance with death, or to how attuned he’s become to John over the years. Either way, he knows. The doctors pronounce it as a stroke. Sherlock thinks of it as the day his days change from quiet living into an agony of waiting.

There are few mysteries on Earth that are unsolvable, but the mysteries Above are unknowable, even to Sherlock Holmes. So Sherlock waits, and he keeps his bees, and hopes that wherever John has gone, he will one day follow.


End file.
